The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence
With the War for Independence over a year old and hope for a peaceful resolution nonexistent, the Continental Congress appointed a Committee of Five—including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin— to draft a document "declar[ing] the causes which impel [the American colonies] to the separation." Thirty-three-year-old Jefferson composed the initial draft, completing it in seventeen days. The committee submitted its draft to Congress on June 28, 1776, and on July 2, Congress voted for independence. Two days later, after numerous edits, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence by unanimous vote.
July 4, 1776
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States ...

The Politics
The Politics 1
Aristotle
Thomas Jefferson began studying Greek at the age of nine, and later in life employed so many Greek phrases in his letters that John Adams, his frequent correspondent, complained of them. The Founders' interest in classical languages was not academic, but political and philosophical. Among the ancient books that they drew upon was Aristotle's Politics, a catalog of constitutions and a guide to understanding regimes.
C. 335-322 B.C.
Book 1
Chapter 1. (1) Since we see that every city is some sort of partnership, and that every partnership is constituted for the sake of some good (for everyone does everything for the sake of what is held to be good), it is clear that all partnerships aim at some good, and ...

Second Treatise of Government
Second Treatise of Government 1
John Locke (1632-1704)
Locke's Two Treatises of Government presented a critique of the divine right of kings and outlined the principles of natural rights and government by consent. Written during the 1670s, they were not published until after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the passage of the English Bill of Rights in 1689. Locke was the political theorist quoted most frequently by Americans in the 1770s.
1690
Chapter II. Of the state of nature.
4. To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions, and persons ...

Discourses Concerning Government
Discourses Concerning Government 1
Algernon Sidney (1623-1683)
Involved in some of the same anti-monarchical causes as John Locke, Sidney was caught up in the conspiracy to oust King Charles II. He was beheaded on December 7, 1683, a martyr to the English Whig cause. Fifteen years after his death, his Discourses Concerning Government was published. A hero to John Adams and widely read in the American colonies, Sidney famously inscribed the following in the Visitor's Book at the University of Copenhagen: "This hand, enemy to tyrants, by the sword seeks peace under liberty." This inscription later inspired the state motto of Massachusetts.
1698
Chapter One
Section 17. God having given the Government of the ...

The Constitution of the United States of America
The Constitution of the United States of America
Fifty-five delegates from twelve states (Rhode Island declined to participate) traveled to Philadelphia to attend the Constitutional Convention, which began in May 1787. They quickly scrapped the existing Articles of Confederation, and after four months they concluded their business by adopting a new frame of government. On September 17, thirty-nine delegates signed the Constitution. It was nine months before the requisite nine states ratified the Constitution, putting it into effect. The thirteenth state, Rhode Island, did not ratify it until 1790. Subsequently, it has been amended twenty-seven times.
September 17, 1787
Preamble
We the People of ...

Fragment on the Constitution and the Union
Fragment on the Constitution and the Union 1
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
This never appeared in Lincoln's public speeches, but it is possible that he composed it while writing his First Inaugural Address. It draws upon the King James translation of Proverbs 25:11—"A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver"—to describe the relationship between the principles of the Declaration and the purpose of the Constitution.
January 1861
All this is not the result of accident. It has a philosophical cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining ...

Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved
Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved 1
James Otis (1725-1783)
Otis rose to prominence in 1761, after he gave a courtroom speech opposing the Writs of Assistance—blanket warrants issued by the British for searching suspect property. He edited that speech into this essay three years later, after the passage of the Sugar Act. Its arguments contain the seed of the American Revolution—an appeal to natural rights applied against particular abuses of political power. Struck by lightning in 1783, Otis did not live beyond the Revolution. But John Adams remarked that he had never known a man "whose service for any ten years of his life were so important and essential to the cause of his country as those ...

A Summary View of the Rights of British America
A Summary View of the Rights of British America 1
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson began his public career in 1769 in the Virginia House of Burgesses, the colonial legislature. British implementation of the Coercive Acts of 1774 (also known as the Intolerable Acts)—passed in response to the Boston Tea Party—prompted the "Summary View," Jefferson's first publication. Written for Virginians who were choosing delegates to the First Continental Congress, it laid the groundwork for later appeals by a "free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature."
July 1774
Resolved, that it be an instruction to the said deputies when assembled in General Congress with the deputies from the other ...

An Election Sermon
An Election Sermon 1
Gad Hitchcock (1718-1803)
Pastors and ministers were among the highest educated citizens in the American colonies, and often addressed politics from the pulpit. This sermon by Hitchcock was delivered on election day in 1774, in the presence of General Thomas Gage, the British military governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. It decries British monarchical rule and celebrates the idea of the consent of the governed, appealing to reason as well as revelation.
1774
...In a mixed government, such as the British, public virtue and religion, in the several branches, though they may not be exactly of a mind in every measure, will be the security of order and tranquility—Corruption and venality, the certain ...

The Farmer Refuted
The Farmer Refuted 1
Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804)
When Loyalist writings began to appear in New York newspapers in 1775, nineteen-year-old Hamilton responded with an essay defending the colonists' right of revolution. Still a student at King's College, he followed up with this second pamphlet, expanding his argument on the purpose of legitimate government.
February 23, 1775
I shall, for the present, pass over to that part of your pamphlet, in which you endeavor to establish the supremacy of the British Parliament over America. After a proper eclaircissement of this point, I shall draw such inferences, as will sap the foundation of every thing you have offered.
The first thing that presents itself is a wish, that "I ...

Common Sense
Common Sense 1
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Published anonymously in January 1776 by an Englishman who had come to Philadelphia two years before, Common Sense became the most published work of the founding era. Printed over half a million times in a nation of three million people, it made a passionate case for liberty and against monarchy. Unpopular in later life for his attacks on Christianity, Paine will always be remembered for this pamphlet—a pamphlet often said to have launched the American Revolution.
January 10, 1776
On the Origin and Design of Government in General, With Concise Remarks on the English Constitution
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them ...

Letter to Roger Weightman
Letter to Roger Weightman 1
Thomas Jefferson
Written just days before his death on July 4, 1826, this letter to the mayor of Washington, D.C., encapsulates the great cause of Jefferson's life.
June 24, 1826
Respected Sir:
The kind invitation I receive from you, on the part of the citizens of the city of Washington, to be present with them at their celebration on the fiftieth anniversary of American Independence, as one of the surviving signers of an instrument pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world, is most flattering to myself, and heightened by the honorable accompaniment proposed for the comfort of such a journey. It adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness, to be deprived by it of a personal participation ...

Virginia Declaration of Rights
Virginia Declaration of Rights 1
George Mason (1725-1792)
The Virginia Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason as a preamble to the Virginia Constitution, is—along with the Declaration of Independence that followed a month later—the clearest statement of the social contract theory of government found in major early American documents.
June 12, 1776
A declaration of rights made by the Representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free Convention; which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of Government.
Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state ...

Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments
Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments 1
James Madison (1751-1836)
Madison circulated the Memorial and Remonstrance anonymously in 1785 as part of the effort to pass the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. It appeals to Christian citizens by emphasizing that Christianity's own teachings preclude politically coerced support for particular sects, and to all citizens based on reason.
June 20, 1785
To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia: A Memorial and Remonstrance
We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly, entitled "A ...

Letter to the Hebrew Congregation
Letter to the Hebrew Congregation 1
George Washington (1732-1799)
The Constitution of 1787 said little directly about religion, with the notable exception of a ban on religious tests as a requirement for federal office. When Washington was elected president, the Bill of Rights had not yet been adopted. Despite this, in his response to a congratulatory note sent to him by a group of Jewish Americans, President Washington characterized religious liberty not as a gift of government or a matter of toleration, but as a natural right possessed by every human being.
August 18, 1790
Gentlemen:
While I receive, with much satisfaction, your Address replete with expressions of esteem; I rejoice in the opportunity ...

On Property
On Property 1
James Madison
Madison, known as the "Father of the Constitution," was elected from Virginia to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1788, where he served four terms. This essay, which then-Congressman Madison wrote for a New York newspaper, connects the idea of property rights as commonly understood to man's natural rights, culminating in the right of conscience.
March 29, 1792
This term in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual."
In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage ...

Letter to John Jay
Letter to John Jay 1
George Washington
Washington writes here as a private citizen to Jay, who as Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the Articles of Confederation witnessed firsthand the Articles' shortcomings, as each state pursued a different foreign policy.
August 15, 1786
Dear Sir:
I have to thank you very sincerely for your interesting letter of the twenty-seventh of June, as well as for the other communications you had the goodness to make at the same time.
I am sorry to be assured, of what indeed I had little doubt before, that we have been guilty of violating the treaty in some instances. What a misfortune it is the British should have so well grounded a pretext for their palpable infractions? —and what a ...

Letter to James Madison
Letter to James Madison 1
George Washington
Washington writes here to Madison, two months before the Constitutional Convention was set to start in Philadelphia. A year earlier, only twelve men from five states attended a gathering held in Annapolis, Maryland, to amend the Articles of Confederation. Both men feared the consequences should this convention similarly fail.
March 31, 1787
My dear Sir:
At the same time that I acknowledge the receipt of your obliging favor of the 21st. Ult. from New York, I promise to avail myself of your indulgence of writing only when it is convenient to me. If this should not occasion a relaxation on your part, I shall become very much your debtor—and possibly like others in similar ...

Federalist 10
Federalist 10 1
James Madison
Whereas democracy entails direct rule of the people, in a republic the people rule indirectly, through their representatives. A republic can therefore encompass a greater population and geographical area. This difference is decisive in the American experiment, Publius argues, for an expansive republic is able to control the inherent danger of majority faction.
November 22, 1787
The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection
Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their ...

Federalist 39
Federalist 39 1
James Madison
Responding to the Anti-Federalist charge that the Constitution will consolidate power at the national level, Publius sets up a five-prong test to demonstrate that the Constitution will establish neither a wholly national government nor one in which all the power resides with the states. A combination, he argues, creates the best chance for liberty.
January 16, 1788
The Conformity of the Plan to Republican Principles
The last paper having concluded the observations which were meant to introduce a candid survey of the plan of government reported by the convention, we now proceed to the execution of that part of our undertaking.
The first question that offers itself is whether the general form ...